The Hangman (poem)
"The Hangman" is a poem written by Maurice Ogden in 1951 and first published in 1954[1] in Masses and Mainstream magazine under the pseudonym "Jack Denoya".[2] Its plot concerns a hangman who arrives in a town and executes the citizens one by one. As each citizen is executed, the others are afraid to object out of fear that they will be next. Finally there is nobody remaining in the town except the hangman and the narrator of the poem. The narrator is then executed by the hangman, as by then there is no one left who will defend him.
The poem contains four-line stanzas with the rhyming pattern AABB.
The poem is usually cited as an indictment of those who stand idly by while others commit grave evil or injustice, such as during the Holocaust. The story it tells is very similar to that of the famous statement "First they came for the communists..." that has been attributed to the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller as early as 1946. It has been interpreted as an attack on McCarthyism, a possibility since the first use of the term "McCarthyism" came on March 29, 1950, in a political cartoon by Herblock of the Washington Post.
Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime,
That Hangman judged with the yellow twist
Of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead;
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raise the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief.
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down,
On roof and street in our quiet town
And, stark and black in the morning air,
The gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
And his air so knowing and businesslike.
And we cried: "Hangman, have you not done,
Yesterday, with the alien one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed:
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch the rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried, "Murderer!" One cried, "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"With him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm,
And we shrank back in quick alarm,
And we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of fear of his hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise,
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took — we had all heard tell —
Was a usurer and infidel,
And: "What," said the Hangman, "have you to do,
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out: "Is this one he,
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
To try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched out comfort hard and long;
And "What concern," he gave us back,
"Have you for the doomed - the doomed and black?"
The fifth.The sixth. And we cried again:
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said, "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score;
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide,
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came
And called in the empty streets my name -
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall
And thought: "There is no one left at all,
For hanging, and so he calls to me
to help pull down the gallows-tree."
And I went out with right good hope
to the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down,
To the courthouse square through the silent town,
and supple and stretched in his busy hand,
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap
And it sprang down with a ready snap—
And then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me, Hangman!" I shouted then.
"That your scaffold was built for other men.
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye:
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said,
"Not I. For I answered straight and I told you true:
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
"For who has served me more faithfully
Than you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others that might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered; and amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me;
"First the alien, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,
None had stood so alone as I -
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there
Cried "Stay" for me in the empty square.
References
- ↑ Archive. http://archive.org/stream/copyrightrenewals1923-1964/1987.txt. Missing or empty
|title=(help) - ↑ Mainstream, Volume 7, Issue 1. 1954.
- ↑ Ogden, Maurice. "The Hangman". edhelper.com. edhelper.
Animated film
In 1964, an animated 11-minute film was made by Les Goldman and Paul Julian. Herschel Bernardi narrated. The film was a co-winner of the Silver Sail award at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1964.
External links
- The Hangman at the Internet Movie Database
- online archive copies of the 1964 animated film of the poem